Friday, December 12, 2008

The Stupid Award of the Week: A comedy skit about Hitler on TV Tokyo

by Chris MaGee

I nearly fell out of my chair when I watched this clip from the TV Tokyo comedy show "Sen YORO!" over at The Hopeless Romantic. I mean, my sense of humor is pretty bizarre and hardly PC, so it's pretty hard to offend me, but what I do find highly offensive is absolute stupidity and these girls are about as stupid as they come.

The segment that aired on Monday shows a cute teacher conducting a class on famous world leaders for her class of cute students. Today's world leader? Well, after the class admits that they've never heard of Adolf Hitler (?!?!?!?!) the teacher goes on to chirp about how he was "very good at delivering speeches and captured the heart of his nation, but that he had some very deep secrets." If you were going to say death camps you're wrong. According to Miss Cute it was that "his speeches had a cleansing effect." You mean like racial cleansing, or that "Calgon, take me awaaaay!" effect? And if you thought it couldn't get more offensive Miss Cute goes on to explain that "Uncle Hitler was said to have a certain complex." What I wonder? Ragingly paranoid anti-semitism? Nope. "It was that he felt he was too short." Of course! All those lengthy biographies theorizing as to what made one of the worst genocidal maniacs in world history tick and it comes down to that if he'd had a pair of lifts in his jack boots the Holocaust would have never happened. Thanks cute Japanese high school girls!

I'm dumbfounded. How do you not know who Hitler is?! It turns out that a lot of other viewers in Japan felt the same way as TV Tokyo was forced to issue an apology saying that the skit was "based on an incorrect understanding of history [and was] inappropriate."

Check out the clip below while it's still online and shake your head in disbelief.